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Guns Part 3: A Shooting Lesson · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. In June of twenty twenty two, just after Memorial Day,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: President Biden gave the first major gun control speech of
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: his presidency. He had just come back from Uvaldi, Texas,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: where twenty one people had been killed by a mass shooter,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: and twelve days before that, he had gone to Buffalo,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: New York, where a gunman had murdered ten people in
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: a grocery store.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: At both places, we spent hours with hundreds of family
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: members who were broken. Those lives will never be the same.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: They had one message for all of us. Do something.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Just do something, for God's sake, do something. I know
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: that we can't prevent every tragedy, but here's what I
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: believe we have to do. Here's what the overwhelming majority
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: of means. Here can people believe we must do. Here's
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: what the families in Buffalo and Uvaldi in Texas told
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: us we must do. We need to ban assault weapons
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: and high capacity magazines.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: President Obama made the same plea here. He is talking
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: about the twenty twelve shooting in Aurora, Colorado, where a
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: gunman with an assault rifle killed twelve people and wounded
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: another fifty eight.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Weapons designed for the theater of war have no place
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: in a movie theater. A majority of Americans agree with
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: us on this, and by the way, so did Ronald Reagan,
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: one of the staunchest defenders of the Second Amendment, who
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: wrote to Congress in nineteen ninety four urging them. This
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: is Ronald Reagan speaking, urging them to listen to the
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: American public and to the law enforcement community and support
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: a ban on the further manufacture of military style assault weapons.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Not to mention Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton went on about
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: assault rifles so much he got sick of it.
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: But I'm telling you, it's amazing to me that we
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: even have to have this debate. I mean, how long
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: are we going to let this go on?
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: And then Clinton concluded with something close to despair.
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry to be so frustrated, but sometimes it seems
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: that the president's job, i'll to be dealing with things
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: that are not obvious.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: For the past thirty years, banning assault weapons has been
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: the rallying cry of the gun control movement. Every time
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: a mass shooter attacks somewhere in the United States, dressed
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: in full army camo with a full on military assault
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: weapon slung over their shoulder, the issue comes up again.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: And next week or next month, when another mass shooter strikes,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: you will hear this speech again.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: A few years ago, the family of the inventor of
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: VAR fifteen, he would have been horrified to know that
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the design was being used as slaughtered children and other
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: innocent lives instead of being used as a military weapon
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: of the battlefields as was designed. That's who's dying for
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: enough enough.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: about assault rifles, the most hated gun in America. Because
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: midway through this miniseries on gun violence, I realized that
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I didn't understand why this gun, out of all the
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: guns in America, was the weapon that so many people
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: wanted to ban. There are a hundred proposals out there
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: for confronting gun violence, should this one be at the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: top of the list. So I looked for someone who
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: could give me an assault rifle tutorial, and I chose
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: as my teacher, Greg Waller, gun enthusiast, competitive shooter, college professor,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: hockey fan, big friendly guy with gray hair, author of
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: a number of scholarly law review articles on assault weapons
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: and their implications. And I should point out one of
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: the leaders of the other side of the assault weapons battle,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: which is what I wanted, someone who would tell me
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: things I didn't know, and, given all my predictable liberal biases,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: maybe things I might not want to know. Greg Wallace
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: and I didn't talk politics or the Second Amendment or
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: the NRA. We just talked guns.
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: Close up wind over there that son maybe come here?
• 4:59
  Speaker 6: Got it?
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: The tutorial began in his office at Campbell Law School
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: in Durham, North Carolina. Wallace put a large black nylon
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: bag on his desk and took out the gun in question.
• 5:13
  Speaker 7: It is a.
• 5:16
  Speaker 8: Because I told you it was a felony to bring
• 5:19
  Speaker 8: a firearm on educational campus in North Carolina.
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: But there is a nice exception for educational purposes. And
• 5:31
  Speaker 5: I have my get out of jail free letter here
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: from the Dean.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: It was an AR fifteen, the most popular brand of
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: assault rifle sold in the United States.
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: Does the AR stand for Armor White Rifle?
• 5:48
  Speaker 7: Oh?
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: Armley, Yeah, yeah, the company that laid it.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: In the Second World War, American soldiers used a rifle
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: called the M one. You've seen one, I'm sure in
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: war movies. Long, slender, unadorned. The body of the rifle
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: is made of walnut with a metal gun barrel poking
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: out of one end. An AR fifteen belongs to the
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: generation of military weapons that followed the M one, made
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: out of metal with plastic in the stock in the
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: handguard black, much lighter than its predecessor, firing a less powerful,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: smaller bullet.
• 6:20
  Speaker 5: It's a trade off.
• 6:21
  Speaker 7: Do you go with more rounds of a perhaps less lethal,
• 6:29
  Speaker 7: still lethal, but less so, and allow the soldier to
• 6:33
  Speaker 7: carry more rounds, or do you go with the larger,
• 6:37
  Speaker 7: more lethal round but they can't carry as many and
• 6:41
  Speaker 7: that's the trade off, and the military decided to go
• 6:45
  Speaker 7: with the smaller round.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: The thinking was a lighter, less powerful weapon makes less noise,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: produces less of a flash, so it's harder to spot
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: on the battlefield. It has less recoil compared to say,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: a shotgun. Spend an afternoon hunting with a shotgun and
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: your shoulder will get all bruised. That gun has a
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: savage kick, not the AR fifteen, which makes it a
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: little easier to get the gun back on target and
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: fire off a second shot. Do you know I've never
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: seen one of these.
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: Never seen one. It is unloaded. That will check again,
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: so you want to hold one.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just that I'd never seen an assault rifle before.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: I'd never held a gun of any kind before when
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I was growing up in Canada. I don't think I
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: even knew anyone who'd held a gun, not to mention
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: that the AR fifteen wasn't a hunting rifle, something you
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: shoot rabbits or deer with which I could rationalize away.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: It was a weapon of war. Ugly, unsettling. I think
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Wallace was a little amused by my discomfort. He tried
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: to reassure me. What I was holding, he said, was
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the civilian version of the AR fifteen, not the military version.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: They looked the same, but they were fundamentally different weapons.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: So if this was an actual military AR fifteen, it
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: would have what how would it differ from what I'm
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: looking at right now?
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: Right would do?
• 8:09
  Speaker 7: Is you would have This is the switch here that
• 8:12
  Speaker 7: selects fire and safe.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: The switch was on the side of the gun, small
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: but clearly marked safe is locked, fire is ready to go.
• 8:22
  Speaker 7: There's only two options on this because it's a semi
• 8:25
  Speaker 7: automatic only, so you switch it to fire and it
• 8:29
  Speaker 7: fires one bullet for each pull of the trigger.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: The Army's AR fifteen has a different switch.
• 8:36
  Speaker 7: With the military weapon, it is capable of what's called
• 8:39
  Speaker 7: selective fire, which means there would be a third option
• 8:42
  Speaker 7: on here. One option would be full auto, which is
• 8:47
  Speaker 7: you pull the trigger and hold it down and it
• 8:49
  Speaker 7: fires continuously until it either runs out of ammunition or
• 8:53
  Speaker 7: that you let the trigger up. It can also fire
• 8:56
  Speaker 7: semi auto. There would be the semi auto select and
• 8:59
  Speaker 7: then there would be the safe.
• 9:00
  Speaker 9: That's the principal difference.
• 9:02
  Speaker 7: Yes, the real, the material difference between the two is
• 9:06
  Speaker 7: that one is a machine gun and the other is not.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: He showed me how to hold the gun, handle it,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: brief me on its history. Then we went downstairs to
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: his stuv and drove forty minutes to a shooting range.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: He belongs to. Nothing. Fancy a little shed in the
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: midst of some piney woods where you sign in a
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: series of long shooting alleys scooped out of the side
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: of a hill. We set up cardboard targets in the
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: shape of a man's head and torso put on ear protection.
• 9:38
  Speaker 8: All right, we're gonna start off with this one right here.
• 9:41
  Speaker 8: This is a it's a custom built AR fifteen. It
• 9:48
  Speaker 8: has the adjustable stock. It has a fourteen and a
• 9:51
  Speaker 8: half inch barrel. But with this right here, this muzzle
• 9:55
  Speaker 8: device is pinned and welded on it, so the barrel
• 9:59
  Speaker 8: is sixteen inches long. If it's not sixteen inches long,
• 10:03
  Speaker 8: if it's shorter than that, it's called a short barrel rifle,
• 10:06
  Speaker 8: and you have to register it with the ATF and
• 10:10
  Speaker 8: pay a two hundred dollars tax.
• 10:11
  Speaker 6: Snap.
• 10:11
  Speaker 8: Okay, uh, this is legal, I mean obviously.
• 10:17
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 10:18
  Speaker 8: You want to shoot it? Yeah, okay, all right, I will.
• 10:22
  Speaker 8: Let's get you comfortable on this here, so see if
• 10:26
  Speaker 8: that works. Now, what you need to do is to
• 10:29
  Speaker 8: hold it up here, okay, all right, and then you
• 10:32
  Speaker 8: need to lean your head over a little bit where
• 10:34
  Speaker 8: you can see with your You keep looking with.
• 10:37
  Speaker 6: Your right eye. You want to see that. You want
• 10:39
  Speaker 6: to find the red dot in there. You see it?
• 10:43
  Speaker 9: Yep?
• 10:44
  Speaker 8: This time you want to come out here and take
• 10:46
  Speaker 8: this one up and hold it right here. Okay, put
• 10:49
  Speaker 8: your finger up on the side. There we go.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 10:52
  Speaker 8: I want you to bring your left foot forward, get
• 10:54
  Speaker 8: in that like kind of boxing stance. There you go,
• 10:56
  Speaker 8: there you go, all right, bend forward, just a little bit.
• 10:59
  Speaker 8: All right, now we're going I'm gonna take it off
• 11:02
  Speaker 8: of safety. Now, once you touch that trigger, once the
• 11:05
  Speaker 8: safety goes off, it will fire. Okay, all right, yeah,
• 11:09
  Speaker 8: so aim it?
• 11:16
  Speaker 6: Who?
• 11:18
  Speaker 9: Lord?
• 11:19
  Speaker 6: That would What did you think about that? Jesus kicked it?
• 11:25
  Speaker 6: Did it kick a lot? Well?
• 11:27
  Speaker 9: Wasn't that?
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: It's just the sudden awareness of the there's.
• 11:30
  Speaker 6: A Yeah, it's a surprise.
• 11:34
  Speaker 8: I mean it is. The very first time you do it,
• 11:36
  Speaker 8: you get used to the sort of what would you
• 11:40
  Speaker 8: call violence of it, you.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Know, cussive?
• 11:43
  Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: My first question for Wallace was what makes an assault
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: rifle an assault rifle? What was it that I was
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: holding when I fired it? It sounded like I imagined
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: a gun would sound like, and felt just like I
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: had imagined and a gun would feel like. So what
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: made this gun different from other guns? I thought there
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: would be an easy answer. It turns out there wasn't.
• 12:17
  Speaker 7: One of the things about the AR fifteen is some
• 12:20
  Speaker 7: people have called it the Lego of modern rifles because
• 12:26
  Speaker 7: you can put a lot of different things on it. Yes,
• 12:32
  Speaker 7: so this has got a scope on it rather than
• 12:35
  Speaker 7: just the red dot site there, It's got a scope
• 12:38
  Speaker 7: one to ten scope. It also has this red dot
• 12:42
  Speaker 7: here that I can flip it to the side and
• 12:45
  Speaker 7: aim it if I'm going from scope to red dot
• 12:49
  Speaker 7: like that. It has a flashlight on it, and it
• 12:55
  Speaker 7: has a little handstop here, a little grip stuff.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: What he meant by that phrase the lego of modern
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: rifles was that the AR fifteen was endlessly configurable. It's
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: not like a Smith and Wesson six shooter from the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century, or a colonial musket, or even the shotgun
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: that your parents might have had. We all have a
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: picture in our mind of what those guns look like,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: but an AR fifteen is more like a firearm platform
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: than a specific kind of gun. Its most distinctive feature,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: which you can always use to spot an assault rifle,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: is a tube that runs along the top of the
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: gun barrel. It's an ingenious system that redirects gas is
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: expelled from the bullet, leaving the gun to reload the
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: next bullet in the chamber. But that platform supports a
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: virtually infinite number of add ons and upgrades. You can
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: replace the gun sight and gun jargon, the optic to
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: let you see the target better, a place the trigger
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: with something that feels more comfortable upgrade what's called the
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: bolt carrier the guts of the rifle. To reduce the
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: chance of jamming, put a muzzle flash hidher on it
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: so the gun doesn't light up when it fires. A
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: suppressor to reduce sound to dust. A salt rifles can
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: have what's called a pistol grip. When you pull the trigger,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the balance of your fingers rest on the same kind
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: of handle you would typically see on a handgun. There's
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: also something called a forward grip, dropping down from the
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: barrel of the gun, where you put your non shooting hand.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: You can, if you want keep both, have just one,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: or have none at all. The part of the gun,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the stock that rests against your shoulder, can be adjustable,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: so you can fit the gun to your own dimensions.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: On and on and on. So when you ban an
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: assault rifle, what's being banned. The assumption of most people,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: I think is that the gun control movement intends to
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: ban the platform, But they don't. No one's looking to
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: ban the distinctive gas to reloading system, or more ambitiously,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: the category of light, easy to carry and handle semi
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: automatic rifles. What is called an assault rifle ban is
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: simply an attempt to specify which lego pieces you are
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: and are not allowed to add to the platform. Even
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: the federal ban on assault rifles in place from nineteen
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: ninety four to two thousand and four was just a
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: ban on some of the add ons in that law.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Congress made a short list of the most problematic modifications
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: to the rifle platform and said you could only have
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: one of them. The Senate bill, introduced after Biden's speech
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: makes a slightly longer list of problematic modifications and says
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: you can't use any of them. Now, do the lego
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: pieces on those lists actually make the gun more dangerous?
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Not really more comfortable maybe or easier to clean and handle.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: But ninety nine percent of the lethality of an assault
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: rifle is in the platform. When we were at the range,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: for example, Wallace went on at some length about another
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: of the modifications that comes up in assault weapons discussions.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Magazine size magazines are the rectangular metal boxes that hold ammunition.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: In keeping with its status as a lego of rifles,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: you can go on the Internet and any number of
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: replacement magazines for your gun that hold thirty rounds or
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: even fifty rounds. So one of the things that assault
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: rifle bands tend to do is prohibit the sale of
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: magazines that hold more than ten bullets. The thinking is,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: why make things easier on the mass shooter. Make him
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: change magazines two or three or four times. Wallace showed
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: me what this means in practice. He held his gun
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: with one hand and reached for a spare magazine on
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: his belt.
• 16:38
  Speaker 8: What you would do is you would have like a
• 16:41
  Speaker 8: magazine change. So let's say he's out, so he's going
• 16:46
  Speaker 8: to do this right here, and he's ready to go again. Now,
• 16:50
  Speaker 8: how long did it take to change that magazine? Just
• 16:53
  Speaker 8: a couple of seconds. And one of the things that
• 16:55
  Speaker 8: the people who say, well, we gotta make magazine changes
• 17:00
  Speaker 8: more often make smaller magazines, so he'll have to change
• 17:03
  Speaker 8: more often. If you were lying down on the ground there,
• 17:07
  Speaker 8: could you get up and attack me in the time
• 17:10
  Speaker 8: it took me to change that magazine? No, probably could.
• 17:14
  Speaker 8: I mean you probably could, so.
• 17:18
  Speaker 6: I'd have you do it, But don't want you to
• 17:19
  Speaker 6: get to close all already.
• 17:20
  Speaker 8: But when you're in a closed area and people are
• 17:27
  Speaker 8: down on the floor, it's going to be a rare
• 17:30
  Speaker 8: situation where somebody is going to be able to jump
• 17:33
  Speaker 8: up and subdue the shooter while he's changing a magazine.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Well, it's this point, was it? Limiting magazines was the
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: kind of thing that sounded like a good idea to
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: people who didn't know anything about guns, or who were
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: too squeamish to think about the way mass shooters actually behaved.
• 17:53
  Speaker 8: And then you have mass shooters with several guns, different guns,
• 17:58
  Speaker 8: multiple guns, and if they're done with one, they just
• 18:00
  Speaker 8: drop it and they pick up the other one. It's
• 18:03
  Speaker 8: about as fast as a magazine change.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: How is a mass shooter being deterred by this kind
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: of legislation? And by the way, have you ever looked
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: at the appendix to a typical assault rifle ban. Right
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: after they catalog the short list of guns that will
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: be made illegal, they run a very long list of
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: the guns that will remain on the market, the guns
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: you can still buy. There are hundreds and hundreds of
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: weapons typically on the exemp list, stretching over many pages.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Let me just read to you from the appendix of
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the Senate assault rifle ban introduced after Biden's speech. I've
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: chosen at random the section that deals with guns made
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: by the Browning Arms Company of Ogden, Utah. Browning bar
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Mark two, Safari Magnum Rifle, Browning bar Mark two, Safari
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: semi auto rifle, Browning bar Stocker Rifle, Browning High Power Rifle,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Browning Long Track Rifle, Browning Short Track Rifle. But the
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Browning High Power Rifle no one has a problem with it.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Same for the Browning bar our, Safari Magnum rifle. Do
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: you know what Browning says about the origins of their
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: bar rifles on their website. This rifle was commissioned by
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: the US Army in an effort to break the stalemate
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: of trench warfare in the battlefields of France and Belgium.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: It is considered one of the first, and certainly one
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: of the most effective of all the automatic centerfire light
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: machine guns ever made. This gun perfectly legal, why because
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: it doesn't look all black and metal and menacing. Assault
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Rifle bands are not really prohibitions on dangerous weapons. They
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: are attempts to wrap a small subset of dangerous weapons
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: ever so gently in red tape. Let's talk a little
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: bit about the historical context of this. I'm trying to
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: restind why, given all that you've set all of these nuances,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: how does the AR fifteen become such a kind of
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: bogeyman for in this gun controlled debate, How does it
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: become so notorious? What is your what is your interpretation
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: of how this gun acquires such a kind of bad reputation.
• 20:23
  Speaker 7: There was a fellow back in the late nineteen eighties
• 20:26
  Speaker 7: named Josh Sugarman at the Vadace Policy Center, and one
• 20:31
  Speaker 7: of the things that people who wanted to ban guns
• 20:34
  Speaker 7: back in the sixties seventies eighties, they focused on handguns.
• 20:40
  Speaker 7: Their call for handgun bands really never got any traction
• 20:43
  Speaker 7: in the media or with legislators. So he published a
• 20:49
  Speaker 7: paper that suggested that they change policy and focus on
• 20:53
  Speaker 7: these so called assault weapons. And he said there were
• 20:56
  Speaker 7: two things. He says, Number one, we can take advantage
• 20:58
  Speaker 7: of the public's ignorance that they are machine guns. And
• 21:04
  Speaker 7: even today, even today, there are a lot of people
• 21:07
  Speaker 7: who still, like Helaldo Revere on the Vibe, I think
• 21:10
  Speaker 7: that these AR fifteens are fully automatic weapons, and.
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: That's a mistake.
• 21:15
  Speaker 7: They're not. But and then he also said, and we
• 21:19
  Speaker 7: can also take advantage of their scary looks, you know,
• 21:23
  Speaker 7: sort of the scary black rifle kind of thing, where
• 21:27
  Speaker 7: they're just terrifying the communicate some kind of sinister, you
• 21:31
  Speaker 7: know effects.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Wallace was talking about a hugely influential report that came
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: out before the first assault rifle ban was passed in
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties that really put the issue on the map.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I looked it up after Wallace told me about it.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Here's the conclusion, which I have to say astounded me.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Assault weapons, just like armor piercing bullets, machine guns and
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: plastic firearms, are a new topic. The weapons menacing looks,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: versus semi automatic assault weapons, anything that looks like a
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun can
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: these weapons. The campaign against assault rifles was predicated on
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: the assumption that most of us don't really know what
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: an assault rifle is.
• 22:36
  Speaker 10: In nineteen eighty eight, as a result of an increase
• 22:40
  Speaker 10: that we'd seen in incidents involving assault weapons, I wrote
• 22:47
  Speaker 10: a study called Sault Accessories in America that laid out
• 22:51
  Speaker 10: the fact that we're seeing this new trend as far
• 22:54
  Speaker 10: as weapons being designed and marketed by the firearms industry,
• 22:59
  Speaker 10: and really warned that this was a dangerous new shift
• 23:01
  Speaker 10: that we were.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Saying, Josh Sugreman, Executive director of the Violence Policy Institute,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: and that the were you one of the first voices
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: to kind of point out the rise of assault weapons
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: as a problem?
• 23:18
  Speaker 10: Yes, I was one of the first voices to focus
• 23:21
  Speaker 10: on assault weapons. That really was because of Historically, the
• 23:26
  Speaker 10: Violence Policy Center has tracked the gun industry, tracked their trends,
• 23:31
  Speaker 10: track what they're marketing, what they're developing.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: I called Sugarman up right after I got back from
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: North Carolina. His group has been at the forefront of
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the assault rifle ban movement since the nineteen nineties, strategy
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: research the thinking behind legislation. A few years ago, for example,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: his outfit published bullet Hoses semi Automatic assault Weapons? What
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: are they? What's so bad about them? First chapter is
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: a short ten point executive summary of the group's position.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: And let me read to you the first four points.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: One.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Semi automatic assault weapons are civilian versions of military assault weapons.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: There are virtually no significant differences between them. Two military
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: assault weapons are machine guns. Three civilian assault weapons are
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: not machine guns. They are semi automatic weapons. Okay, then
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: comes s crucial point four. However, this is a distinction
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: without a difference in terms of killing power civilians. Semi
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Automatic assault weapons incorporate all the functional design features that
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: make assault weapons so deadly. They are arguably more deadly
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: than military versions because most experts agree that semi automatic
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: fire is more accurate and thus more lethal than automatic fire.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: According to one of the leading gun control advocates in
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: the country, the assault weapons the military uses and the
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: ones legal for civilian use are essentially idea entacle in
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: their killing power. Now, I had actually asked Wallace about
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: this when we were at the range. Could he do
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: a simple demonstration for me? How fast could he fire
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: his semi automatic assault rifle, the AR fifteen.
• 25:27
  Speaker 6: I actually have.
• 25:30
  Speaker 8: We make this a little more interesting.
• 25:36
  Speaker 6: I have a timer.
• 25:37
  Speaker 9: Uh huh.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: He clipped an electronic device to his belt.
• 25:41
  Speaker 8: All right, thirty round magazine.
• 25:44
  Speaker 9: Now you're going to do this as fast as you can,
• 25:46
  Speaker 9: fast as I can. Okay, that was thirty That was thirty.
• 26:02
  Speaker 8: Wow, six point five seconds.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: An assault rifle can fire a lot of bullets in
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: a very short time. Then he picked up a semi
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: automatic handgun from his gun bag and repeated the exercise.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Held the gun out with two hands, ate at the target,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: fired off ten shots as fast as he could.
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: All right, yeah, see, same type of thing.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: You know, he was faster with the assault rifle, but
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: only by a tick. Someone with a civilian semi automatic
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: assault rifle can't really fire any faster than someone with
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: a handgun, which makes sense. They work with the same principle,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: one bullet per pull the trigger. But how would that
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: compare it to a military rifle in full machine gun mode? Remember,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Shugelmann's group said that when it comes to killing power,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the semi auto automatic divide was a distinction without a difference.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Wallace said that if you were holding a military assault rifle,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: he could have fired close to one hundred bullets in
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: that same six and a half second window. And so
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: you're saying that a machine gun automatic weapon in that
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: same period of time could have could have fired an
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: additional seventy rounds.
• 27:30
  Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, Well, the rate of fire for a fully
• 27:34
  Speaker 8: automatic weapon is about thirty rounds in two seconds.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: That's a big difference.
• 27:40
  Speaker 6: It is a big difference.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Why are gun control advocates trying to pretend that these
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: two weapons are the same. How is being able to
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: fire seventy extra rounds in six seconds, a distinction without
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: a difference.
• 27:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Then you have a series of of points that
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: are all about spray firing. Talk about spray firing. What
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: do you mean by spray firing? Back to bullet hoses
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: and to Josh Sugarman.
• 28:11
  Speaker 10: Spray firing means laying down an indiscriminate field of fire
• 28:15
  Speaker 10: using the capacity and firepower of the weapon. Instead of
• 28:19
  Speaker 10: targeting an individual, you can target an area for your
• 28:23
  Speaker 10: offensive use of the weapon.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, is spray firing associated with semi automatic or automatic weapons?
• 28:31
  Speaker 10: Spray firing, which is a I would not say it's
• 28:33
  Speaker 10: a technical term, but the term is used to deal
• 28:36
  Speaker 10: with a refer to full auto weapons.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: So why is it relevant here in a discussion.
• 28:42
  Speaker 10: You're a spray in area within with rounds.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: But wait, I thought this was a discussion of the
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: assault weapons that are available for civilian purchase, which are
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: semi automatic. So why do you have three points about
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: spray firing when it's not relevant to civilian assault weapons.
• 28:57
  Speaker 10: I think you're kind of just reading it. To be
• 28:59
  Speaker 10: honest with you, there are three points that we have
• 29:01
  Speaker 10: that defines.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: I'm going to quote you hold on civilian assault weapons
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: keep the specific functional design features that make this deadly
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: firing easy. Doesn't that say that civilian assault replans are
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: capable of spray firing? But you just said they're not.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: But you just said they're not.
• 29:18
  Speaker 10: Well, I guess you've you've caught me in a you know,
• 29:22
  Speaker 10: lack of technical Uh.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, wait, Josh, you're the one you're trying to
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: educate the public about assault weapons, and you've just told
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: me that I've caught you in on what is a
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: really crucial point.
• 29:37
  Speaker 10: I was actually being sarcastic.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, I missed that. I'm sorry I missed the sarcasm.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: I apologize. But at this point things were getting a
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: little testy because Sugarman refused to own up to the
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: game he's playing. The public thinks that a civilian assault
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: weapon is a machine gun, So let's make a big
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: deal about all the nasty things that a machine gun
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: can do and just not mention that a civilian assault
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: weapon is actually not a machine gun and that none
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: of the modifications on the table we can turn it
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: into a machine gun. But how do you spray fire
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: with a semi automatic weapon? Don't you still have to
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: pull the trigger for every bullet that comes out of
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: the weapon, Yes, you do. So. Spray firing is where
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: you hold the gun on your hip with the finger
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: depressed on the trigger in automatic mode and essentially, as
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: you say, you know whatever, hose down the area. But
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: you can't do that with a civilian weapon.
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: Yes you can.
• 30:38
  Speaker 10: You can press the trigger as quickly as you can
• 30:42
  Speaker 10: with your finger.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: So, but you could do that with any semi automatic weapon.
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: That is true.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: So you're talking about something that's true of all semi
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: automatic weapons.
• 30:54
  Speaker 10: Now, what I'm talking about is that there are specific
• 30:57
  Speaker 10: design characteristics that are common to military assault weapons that
• 31:02
  Speaker 10: are contained or present in semi automatic versions of them
• 31:06
  Speaker 10: that are marketed to the civilian population.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: At this point, Sugarman shifted gears. What he was really
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: worried about with civilian assault rifles, he said, was the
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: pistol grip. He said, it was the pistol grip that
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: made it so easy to fire a civilian assault rifle
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: so rapidly with the gun resting on your hip. But
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: after watching Greg Wallace at the gun range, all I
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: could think of was, why are we so worried that
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: someone might hold an assault rifle from their hip? The
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: big advantage of holding a rifle. The traditional way is
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: that you have three points of contact with the weapon,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: two hands on the weapon itself, and your shoulder acting
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: as a brace. Put your gun on your hip and
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: you're down to two points of contact. You can't aim
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: that well. Your arm's going to get really tired because
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: the gun is a big, heavy piece of metal, and
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: your wrist is kind of awkwardly tucked in under the
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: gun because it's not designed to be used that way.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: It's not easier to shoot an assault rifle from the hip.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: It's harder. I know people fire guns that way all
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: the time in the movies, but that's the movies. If
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: I was an American citizen who was interested in doing
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: something about gun violence, I would find it very difficult
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: to follow your line of reasoning.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: Here.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: You both say that these guns are functionally equivalent, and
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: then you say, well, they're not functionally equivalent because one's
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: automatic and one semi automatic. And then you say, well,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: actually the semi automatic one is worse. And then you say,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: and they facilitate spray firing, But then you say, spray
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: firing is really associated with the automatic version, which is
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: not the one we're talking about my head is spinning.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Why don't you just say what you mean?
• 32:45
  Speaker 10: Well, I think part of is I know a lot
• 32:47
  Speaker 10: more about guns than you do, I think, And I
• 32:50
  Speaker 10: think you're kind of creating a word salad from some
• 32:53
  Speaker 10: sort of I don't know why.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: In the previous episode of this series, I talked about
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the absurdity of the stories that gun lovers tell themselves
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: that all of us, for our own good, need to
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: be armed before we descend into the New York City subway,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: or that an obscure English slave trader named John Knight
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: is all the stands between us and tyranny. This is
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: the same kind of absurdity, only from the other side.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: This is someone just making stuff up in order to
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: rile us all up and try and win a policy argument.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Now I understand why Sugarman is doing it. He wants
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: to find a crack in the armor of the gun
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: lobby and he thinks assault rifles are his way in.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I'm completely sympathetic to the overall,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: cause I'm a Canadian. For goodness sake, I don't believe
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: anyone should have guns at all. But this is the
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: problem with the way we talk about guns, right that
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: in the middle of an ongoing national tragedy, we can't
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: bring ourselves to have an honest conversation about guns. Both
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: sides would rather just make things up. And if you
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: can't have an honest conversation, how do you get anywhere.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: A few years ago, a group of ten trauma surgeons, erdos,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: and pathologists sat down and read through two hundred and
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: thirty two autopsy reports from twenty three different American mass shootings.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: They sorted every victim according to the gun they were
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: shot with, handgun, shotgun, rifle. The group wanted to know
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: did the kind of weapon used by a mass shooter
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: make a difference in the likelihood of one of their
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: gunshot victims dying. It wasn't a question anyone had ever
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: asked before, maybe because the answer seemed obvious. Rifles fired
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: bigger bullets at greater velocity than handguns. They are going
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: to be the biggest killers. The leader of the study
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: was the chief of the Trauma Center at George Washington
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: University Hospital in Washington, d C. Baback SERRANI.
• 35:09
  Speaker 11: I thought when we were going to do the study,
• 35:10
  Speaker 11: I was like, this is a slam dunk. Clearly the
• 35:12
  Speaker 11: rifle was the most lethal of them all, and that
• 35:14
  Speaker 11: did not bear out.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: The assault rifle is not the most lethal weapon in
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: mass shootings. Seroni's group found out more people were shot
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: by rifles and handguns, but those differences did not translate
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: into a higher percentage of people killed. The people most
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: likely to die were the ones hit by handguns.
• 35:36
  Speaker 11: The handgun was the most lethal weapon because the person
• 35:40
  Speaker 11: was far more likely to be shot multiple times if
• 35:42
  Speaker 11: the assailant had a handgun as compared to a rifle.
• 35:46
  Speaker 11: In addition, the victim was far more likely to be
• 35:49
  Speaker 11: shot in the torso or the head if the person
• 35:53
  Speaker 11: had a handgun then a rifle. And the reason is
• 35:56
  Speaker 11: I can get closer to you so without you knowing it.
• 35:59
  Speaker 11: By the time I'm on top of you with a handgun,
• 36:02
  Speaker 11: high capacity magazine and multiple clips, I can expend a
• 36:06
  Speaker 11: significant number of rounds. And because I'm close to you,
• 36:09
  Speaker 11: my accuracy is going up, so I can hit you
• 36:12
  Speaker 11: multiple times in the chest, belly, possibly the head, and
• 36:15
  Speaker 11: that you're going to die, Whereas with a rifle in general,
• 36:19
  Speaker 11: you'll see me coming, you may be able to run away.
• 36:21
  Speaker 11: That's one number two. When I hit you with a rifle,
• 36:25
  Speaker 11: the velocity is so high there's a good likelihood you're
• 36:28
  Speaker 11: going to hit the ground, you're going to fall, and
• 36:30
  Speaker 11: that means my accuracy just dropped for the second hit.
• 36:33
  Speaker 11: And so people were less likely to be injured multiple
• 36:36
  Speaker 11: times with a rifle than they were with a handgun.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: President Biden goes to the site of two tragic mass shootings,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: and he is told, for God's sake, do something. But
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: what he proposes to do is the same thing that
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: presidents before him proposed to do, A law that will
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: make no difference at all. What's the point of that
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Americans are killing each other and themselves by the thousands,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: and the people who claim to be most outraged by
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: this fact spend their time debating whether a rifle stock
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: should or shit not be adjustable, all the while pretending
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: that they are fighting in the good fight. They aren't.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: They're wasting our time.
• 37:17
  Speaker 11: If I can get close enough to you, there's absolutely
• 37:21
  Speaker 11: no doubt, none, that a rifle is far more lethal
• 37:25
  Speaker 11: a weapon than a handgun. Just the practicality is getting
• 37:29
  Speaker 11: close enough to you to shoot you multiple times kind
• 37:31
  Speaker 11: of intervene. And so one of the points we raised
• 37:34
  Speaker 11: in the paper was we don't think there should be
• 37:36
  Speaker 11: separate laws for rifles, then there should be for handguns.
• 37:40
  Speaker 11: We think there should be just common laws that apply
• 37:41
  Speaker 11: to both types of weapons.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: There shouldn't be separate laws for rifles then for handguns.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: If we want to have an honest conversation about guns,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: that sentence is a good place to start.
• 37:55
  Speaker 11: At the end of the day, a gun is designed,
• 37:57
  Speaker 11: and a bullet is designed to kill something, whether it's
• 38:00
  Speaker 11: an animal for sports, whether it's a person for homicide, whatever,
• 38:05
  Speaker 11: the weapon's intention is to kill somebody, and they do.
• 38:08
  Speaker 11: Whether designed to.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Do a gun is a gun is a gun. The
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: rest is just foolishness. Our revisionist history Gun series was
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: produced by Jacob Smith, Benda daf Haffrey, Kiara Powell, Tally Emlin,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: and Leeman Gistoo. We were edited by Peter Clowney and
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Julia Barton. Fact checking by Arthur Gomberts and Kashelle Williams.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Original scoring by the Waiscarra, mastering by Flaon Williams, Engineering
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: by Nina Lawrence. Special thanks to Wilson Sayer. I'm nothing
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: that well